Only Sky and Clouds

As you may have noticed by a lot of my selections I'm not a big fan of overly saturated images, yet here I have placed one in 2nd place. Why?

To be successful images should stir an emotion in the eye of the viewer, when I look at this image I am reminded of what Dante's Inferno would look like, or the fires of Mount Doom in the film Lord of the Rings. The dark clouds against the colourful background gives an almost 3D effect to the image.

So while not being a believable representation of what the photographer captured the processing has been so extreme it has entered the realms of abstract art. So for this viewer it did bring back an emotion of what I expect a fiery hell to look like and so deservedly is in 2nd place.

After the first two images where image processing created spectacular images in 3rd place we have an image that is completely believable. The image has a solid base of yellow light across the horizon at the bottom of the image. There are patches of colour in the clouds running diagonally from top left to bottom right, set against a backdrop of grey and white clouds. The photographer has resisted the temptation to overly enhance their image by cranking up that saturation too high and the image is all the stronger for this decision. A really beautiful image, well captured and tastefully processed.

There have been some spectacular images entered into this competition, many have been overly processed to the point of looking unnatural, others walk the fine line between being believable and unbelievable and some go beyond being believable yet still present us with a pleasing, almost abstract image.

The winning image is one where the processing walks that fine line between being believable and not. I like the composition with the main subject being almost in the centre of the frame, this gives the suns rays the chance to radiate out across the rest of the image. The blue sky contrasts nicely with the lighter coloured rays and the cloud. Whilst part of the cloud has 'blown out' (lost detail) it would have been impossible to retain under these circumstances and therefore is acceptable.

I also like the fact that the area of the cloud in the bottom left of the frame has been darkened this forces the viewers eye up to the bright area of the image.

• A good point to remember is that the viewers eye is usually attracted to the brightest part of the image and we want to keep this area away from the edges of our images.